Leading South East law firms launch collaborative employment law service

The four founding law firms: Thomson Snell & Passmore, Brachers, Furley Page and Thackray Williams are providing the service to their clients to minimise the stress of the litigation process without going to employment tribunal or court.

Specially trained employment lawyers at all the participating firms will work together to resolve employment and workplace disputes in a non-adversarial way to ensure a quick and cost effective employment related dispute resolution outcome for both employer and employee sides.

CEL lawyers are professionally trained and hold an ACAS Certificate of Internal Workplace Mediation or equivalent in order to expertly advise on resolving employment disputes in a constructive setting. CEL is different from conventional mediation as it does not involve an independent third party mediator, enabling a more efficient and collaborative negotiation between the parties and their lawyers to reach an agreed settlement.

On the rare occurrence that CEL does not produce a resolution, the parties will not be required to change their lawyers in order to continue seeking a legal solution. Furthermore, the CEL process is confidential and provides an accessible service in which clients can resolve their disputes in a more efficient, less stressful and cost effective manner, than going through the courts.

Both the employer and employee must choose to use CEL and sign a participation agreement. Each side will nominate their CEL lawyer from participating firms before a meeting is arranged within 14-21 days. The parties will then prepare, with help from the collaborative lawyers, publishing statements setting out the resolution they are each seeking to achieve and the CEL lawyers will help both parties to explore areas of agreement, consensus or mutual interest and build on those to try and make sure that resolution is achieved.

Catherine Daw, Partner and Head of Employment at Brachers, adds:

“Adopting a collaborative approach as a means of avoiding potentially costly and time consuming litigation can offer a commercially sound and less antagonistic means of resolving disputes for both employers and employees.

Brachers are pleased to be a founding member of this new initiative and hope it will offer companies and individuals within the South East an alternative to more traditional, adversarial approaches.”

For further information on CEL, how the process works and why choose CEL, please click here to view our fact sheet.

Alternatively, please contact our Head of Employment, Catherine Daw on 01622 655291 or email catherinedaw@brachers.co.uk.

This content is correct at time of publication